“Connected lighting” refers to a system of luminaires which are controlled not by (or not only by) a traditional wired, electrical on-off or dimmer circuit, but rather via a wired or more often wireless network using a digital communication protocol. Typically, each of a plurality of luminaires, or even individual lamps within a luminaire, may each be equipped with a wireless receiver or transceiver for receiving lighting control commands from a lighting control device according to a wireless networking protocol such as ZigBee, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth (and optionally also for sending status reports to the lighting control device using the wireless networking protocol).
Luminaires may have individually controllable parameters, such as brightness and colour, and one or more luminaires may be controlled together in a group in a coordinated manner to create an overall light distribution, or scene, for illuminating an area or space such as room in a desired manner. Combinations of different luminaires and/or different settings of the luminaires can achieve a different overall illumination of the area of space, as desired. In this way, users can fine-tune their light preferences over a large spectrum of parameters, such as white tone, colour, and brightness, to customize their light experience to their needs and tastes. Dynamic effects can also be included.
Rather than having to control individual luminaires, or even individual settings for the or each luminaire, in order to achieve a desired illumination, it is usually preferable for groups of settings to be stored together corresponding to a desired light distribution, or “scene”. For example a “morning” scene, or a “relaxing” scene can be created, which can then be recalled quickly and easily by a user with a single command. Such scenes can be created for particular activities, such as dining or reading for example, providing suitable illumination levels and conditions.
These scenes tend to be grouped into two main categories: scenes can be used to create a specific functional lighting type or they can be used to generate a desired ambiance. Functional lighting types of scenes typically relate to the different tones of white that can be applied, with the purpose of helping relax, concentrate, etc.
Ambiance-oriented scenes, on the other hand, tend to be a mixture of colours with no specific design pattern other than what the user desires to experience. Some systems allow only for manual setting of ambiance scenes (i.e. the user needs to configure each lamp taking part in the scene), while others allow for images to be used: the user selects a specific image and the most striking/predominant colours are extracted and deployed to the lamps. This hopes to create an atmosphere that closely resembles that of the image. For example, if a picture of someone at the beach is chosen, then the lights will typically adopt a combination of yellow, orange, and blue colours, resembling the sand and the ocean/sky.